I mainly agree with Steve Meyer about this much (at least): the world as we find it cries out for an intelligent cause; it did not assemble itself. If I disagree at all with Steve, it would be on the extent to which that intelligent cause may have acted primarily in giving matter the properties and powers that matter is observed to have -- the concept of "matter" doesn't come with any specific properties and powers attached to it. There is no necessity here, and in the absence of necessity we find plenty of room for free divine activity.

As for "gaps," one of these days someone who knows something about this ought to write something systematic and careful about "gaps" and God and science, in which a lot of this could perhaps be sorted out and some things put to rest. Some good articles do exist presently, including one in the March issue of PSCF, by U of Michigan engineer Ronald Larson. I will make only one point responding to one of yours, Bernie: I agree that Meyer's approach might fall afoul of the "gaps" problem, but I do not agree that "science of the gaps" is always to be preferred to "God of the gaps." A pertinent example would be some versions of the multiverse, which, IMO, can be quite properly understood as the functional equivalent of divinizing the universe itself. When someone like Max Tegmark talks about the necessity of having every mathematical truth correspond to a physical truth (and he does talk about that), he's effectively saying, like the neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus, that God!
had no choice when he made the universe. He's also making a formal mathematical system the determining power of what actually exists in reality -- the universe of mathematics becomes the creator (quite literally) of the physical world. And, he does all this b/c otherwise he'd need to invoke the real Creator to account for anthropic evidence; an infinite universe, eternal in time, thus becomes a substitute for the biblical creator. Like Aristotle, Tegmark transfers to the universe the attributes of divinity, and his naturalistic "god" fills the explanatory gap for him. Like the Christian God, however, Tegmark's God -- his multiverse -- can't be observed or detected, either, at least not by any means known to science. At least the Christian God is said to have acted in human history, whether or not someone accepts that claim...

Ted

>>> "Dehler, Bernie" <bernie.dehler@intel.com> 9/9/2009 11:37 AM >>>
Quoting Myers:
"None of the natural processes that we've examined; not chance, necessity, or the combination of the two, have demonstrated the power to produce the effect in question - the specified information that runs the show in biology. But we do know of a cause - a type of cause, which is known to produce that effect, that cause is intelligence. Therefore, intelligent design constitutes the best explanation based on what we know from biology and our knowledge of the cause and effect structure of the world."

Based on that, the ancients, like Moses, thought God made Adam and Eve as de novo adults. Science progressed, and now we (most of us, except YEC's or OEC's) don't think so.

Specifically, here's the flaw from Meyers:
"But we do know of a cause - a type of cause, which is known to produce that effect, that cause is intelligence. "

He doesn't mean some disembodied intelligence, he means God. (Intelligence doesn't exist by itself- it is an attribute of a being.) And we haven't seen God creating things de novo, so we don't have that experience he claims that we do. So really, it does come down to "all ways that we know of can't do it, therefore God did it de novo." That is "god of the gaps." It may be reality, because no one knows, but it is still "god of the gaps." I guess ultimately you need to go with "god of the gaps" or "science of the gaps." Historically, 'science of the gaps' has won.

"He says there is real evidence FOR ID. But I still don't think I've ever heard this so-called evidence..."

I thought Meyer was rather articulate in laying out his argument and I don't believe it was anything that difficult to grasp. The man used infant toys for a visual aid for Pete's sake.

At any rate, his point (unless I got it wrong) was that there is a design pattern (strategy/logic) evident within a cell in which information is processed within a multitude of hierarchical elements. Meyer draws on the experience of coding for computer languages and draws the connection on a variety of levels. "Each one of these design patterns is a feature for which there is only one cause in the known universe; and that cause is intelligent design." - S.M.

Meyer specifically addresses the 'Argument from Ignorance' which you appear to have missed (at about 44:00 min of the clip). The point being that:

"[The Falacious Argument For Design] constitutes nothing more than our ignorance of what natural processes can do. He's [Shermer] saying - or arguing - natural processes cannot produce the effect in question. Therefore, since we cannot think of anything else, we invoke the mysterious notion of Intelligent Design.

But in fact, the notion of intelligent design is not mysterious. It is something we know about from our own repeated experience. And the argument is not an arguement from ignorance. It is an argument from what we know, both about the features of the cell and the genome, but also about the cause and effect structure of the world.

So the Argument for Intelligent Design actually goes like this:

None of the natural processes that we've examined; not chance, necessity, or the combination of the two, have demonstrated the power to produce the effect in question - the specified information that runs the show in biology. But we do know of a cause - a type of cause, which is known to produce that effect, that cause is intelligence. Therefore, intelligent design constitutes the best explanation based on what we know from biology and our knowledge of the cause and effect structure of the world.

That's the form of argument that Darwin used. If this is an unscientific or falacious argument, then so was his. But instead, what I have done is acutally turned tables and show that by using Darwin's method and applying it to information - to evidence he did not yet know about - we can now show that the central legacy of Darwin is not that there is no evidence of design but rather that we can use Darwin's very method to reaffirm the case for design based on these very exciting discoveries of modern biology..." - S.M.

________________________________
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Dehler, Bernie
Sent: Tuesday, September 08, 2009 3:07 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: RE: [asa] Meyer on C-SPAN2
I also saw most of it- missed some of the start. It looked like it was a Discovery Institute show- sponsored by them and had a pro-ID 'moderator' who suggested Discovery books and membership. I wonder how packed the audience was of "friendly's."

One person asked him to explain why Dawkins said evolution was driven by random mutation and natural selection, yet evolution wasn't random? Meyers didn't explain Dawkin's view, and just agreed that it was nonsense- evolution was random. What they both missed is that 'natural selection' mechanism is not random at all. Just because there's a random component to evolution (gene mutation) doesn't mean the ENTIRE thing is random!

Also- they asked about Collins' rejection of ID. Meyers said Collins himself uses ID when appealing to the anthropologic argument for the universe... fine-tuning. I think Collins would respond this way: the anthropologic argument shows that there is design behind the processes of evolution. That is, evolution is not godless. However, Meyers uses ID to combat undirected evolution, which he thinks is atheism.

Meyers said he has no objection to "Behe's mousetrap" evolving, as long as you don't say it was done by random forces, because random forces can't do it.

Meyers objects to defining ID as "Nature can't do it, therefore God did it." He says there is real evidence FOR ID. But I still don't think I've ever heard this so-called evidence, unless it is statistics showing how something is impossible to evolve randomly, which is back to "it can't happen, so God did it."

I just finished watching Steve Meyer discussing his book "Signature in the Cell" on BookTV on C-SPAN2. It was recorded at the Seattle Art Museum on July 21. I highly recommend that any of you interested in this topic watch it. It will be aired 3 more times this weekend. The schedule is:

Meyer is an excellent speaker and he did a great job summarizing his book. If you don't have the time and inclination to buy and read the book, at least see this summary. The last slide nets out the key ID argument, from his perspective.

In particular, note the Q&A. The second question concerns the connection with Francis Collins and the answer is worth watching the show. Other questions relate to Dawkin's view of randomness. And there's a question about ID being a god of the gaps argument. Record it if you can.

Perhaps segments will be posted on YouTube soon, if they haven't already. But do watch this if you get a chance. It's an important backdrop to any discussion of the topic of DNA information, whether you agree or disagree.

Randy

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Received on Wed Sep 9 14:03:45 2009